Socio-technical Infrastructure Research Articles

Community energy and socio-technical infrastructure resilience: analysis of mini/micro hydro power projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract In 2014–15, Pakistan’s provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) launched a decentralised power generation initiative, installing over 356 small hydro power units to provide electricity to over 2.5 million people in its mountainous regions. This initiative built on the foundation of prior community-based mini/micro hydro-power projects (MHPPs) deployed in the region since the 1980s that have experienced mixed success; by 2020, over 150 units were non-operational. This paper investigates the socio-technical factors influencing the success and failure of these projects, focusing on outcomes and processes integral to community MHPPs. The study analyses the critical implications of MHPPs for socio-economic welfare, gender equity and democratic governance through extensive primary research including field observations at 40 sites, questionnaire surveys with community residents in three in-depth case-studies, and expert interviews with local policymakers and project developers. Analysis shows that electricity provision from MHPPs has had positive outcomes for the communities in terms of improved education, poverty alleviation and economic growth, alongside enhanced access to information and gains in women’s entrepreneurship and health. Nonetheless, the study also identifies significant shortcomings in the processes involved in community MHPPs related to inadequate technical assessments, monitoring, and evaluation, as well as challenges arising from undemocratic governance mechanisms and inequitable participation. By teasing out the multiple socio-technical dimensions that shape infrastructure resilience of MHPPs in KPK, this paper contributes to the broader discourse on sustainable community energy projects and informs policy for decentralised energy transitions that ensure democratic alignment and inclusive design.

We need more network capacity! But why do we get it? Infrastructural refraction and the contingencies of network growth and energy transitions

It is accepted that electricity networks need to grow in scale and scope to facilitate decarbonisation. It is also accepted that infrastructural change is incremental. Yet, the incremental delivery of network capacity and the relevance of this for energy transitions have received little attention. Instead, broader, evolutionary accounts of change predominate. Opportunities therefore remain to conceptualise and study the incrementality of network growth and to consider the implications of this for energy transitions. I conceptualise investment in network capacity as an outcome of infrastructural refraction: as emergent of varied and unevenly distributed histories and geographies of electrification beaming through and being refracted by the prism of socio-technical infrastructure in ways that condition the sited reconstitution of network capacities. Examining practices of translation, enacted by network operators, provides a method of revealing the constitutive details and dynamic of infrastructural refraction. A case study focused on the technological framing of the delivery of a 33 kV substation in Central Manchester is explored. The analysis stresses the importance of examining the contingencies of investment in capacity. This paper contributes a concept-method package that helps reveal such details and by proxy the polycentric politics of electrification, investment in electricity network capacity, and energy transitions.

Building Knowledge: Constructing Technoscientific Infrastructures

Through an ethnographic analysis of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and drawing on a Science and Technology Studies (STS) inspired theoretical framework, this article explores architectural space as configured by sociotechnical infrastructures. In the context of the GEIC, by paying attention to the flows of University-employed engineers, prototyped technologies, gas pipes, cables and ventilation, the article illuminates how new spatial configurations emerge through the practices and processes of which the building becomes a part. Such an analysis, it will argue, allows attention to move away from a sole focus on visions of architects and clients or even the agency of users to modify their environment. Instead, the work proposes a fruitful area for future study, paying attention to the connections, components and flows which are modularly plugged into the building and the legacies of “knowledge” which they leave behind.

Synthetic Heritage: Online platforms, deceptive genealogy and the ethics of algorithmically generated memory

Abstract Services offered by genealogy companies are increasingly underpinned by computational remediation and algorithmic power. Users are encouraged to employ a variety of mobile web and app plug-ins to create progressively more sophisticated forms of synthetic media featuring their (often deceased) ancestors. As the promotion of deepfake and voice-synthesizing technologies intensifies within genealogical contexts – aggrandised as mechanisms for ‘bringing people back to life’ – we argue it is crucial that we critically examine these processes and the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin them, as well as their mnemonic impacts. In this article, we present a study of two AI-enabled services released by the genealogy company MyHeritage: Deep Nostalgia (launched 2020), and DeepStory (2022). We carry out a close critical reading of these services and the outputs they produce which we understand as examples of ‘remediated memory’ (Kidd and Nieto McAvoy 2023) shaped by corporate interests. We examine the distribution of agency where the promotion by these platforms of unique and personalised experiences comes into tension with the propensity of algorithms to homogenise. The analysis intersects with nascent ethical debates about the exploitative and extractive qualities machine learning. Our research unpacks the social and (techno-)material implications of these technologies, demonstrating an enduring individual and collective need to connect with our past(s), and to test and extend our memories and recollections through increasingly intense and proximate new media formats.

Socio-technical infrastructure for a learning health system.

Socio-technical infrastructure for a learning health system.

Algorithmic power and scientific knowledge

Abstract This paper critically revisits traditional perspectives on technology within academic and scientific writing studies. It aims to comprehend the intricate, emerging, and dynamic sociotechnical configurations that underlie contemporary scientific practices. These practices increasingly involve language, text, and literacy practices, seen as products of the collaboration between humans and machines. The paper draws on empirical research on influential institutional metadiscourses in high-impact scientific writing produced and/or disseminated by public universities and a research institute in the State of São Paulo (Brazil), whose local policies of globalization are driven by international university rankings. I use a qualitative content analysis approach grounded in socio-anthropological, socio-semiotic, and pragmatic studies of linguistic ideologies to shed light on how ideological and socio-semiotic processes support the metapragmatics of scientific writing in university policy documents. This metapragmatics is utterly alien to the role of performative sociotechnical infrastructures in the production, distribution, and hierarchization of scientific texts. Additionally, these documents do not account for the diverse conditions and restrictions that shape the production and circulation of academic knowledge in geopolitically marginal and equally diverse regions within the country, including those within São Paulo.

Advancing maturity modeling for precision oncology.

This study aimed to map the maturity of precision oncology as an example of a Learning Health System by understanding the current state of practice, tools and informatics, and barriers and facilitators of maturity. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 34 professionals (e.g., clinicians, pathologists, and program managers) involved in Molecular Tumor Boards (MTBs). Interviewees were recruited through outreach at 3 large academic medical centers (AMCs) (n = 16) and a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) company (n = 18). Interviewees were asked about their roles and relationships with MTBs, processes and tools used, and institutional practices. The interviews were then coded and analyzed to understand the variation in maturity across the evolving field of precision oncology. The findings provide insight into the present level of maturity in the precision oncology field, including the state of tooling and informatics within the same domain, the effects of the critical environment on overall maturity, and prospective approaches to enhance maturity of the field. We found that maturity is relatively low, but continuing to evolve, across these dimensions due to the resource-intensive and complex sociotechnical infrastructure required to advance maturity of the field and to fully close learning loops. Our findings advance the field by defining and contextualizing the current state of maturity and potential future strategies for advancing precision oncology, providing a framework to examine how learning health systems mature, and furthering the development of maturity models with new evidence.

The Value of Experience-Centered Design to Responsible Software Design and Engineering

Abstract In this conceptual article, we review experience-centered approaches to the design of personal digital interactive technologies, with a view to exploring how these approaches might be of value in understanding the experience-in-use and the responsible design of today's highly networked, data-rich, and ubiquitous software technologies. Experience-centered design research leans heavily on pragmatist philosophy for its conceptual underpinnings, particularly John Dewey's accounts of aesthetic experience and of inquiry. After reviewing this body of work, we argue that these foundations could be usefully extended to also include Dewey's approach to ethics as an empirical, situated act of moral imagination. In addition, we look to other researchers for perspectives that complement and extend Deweyan experiential pragmatics. In particular, we look to the ways in which Susan Leigh Star's account of socio-technical infrastructures and dialogical approaches to human relations together can provide important insights into the experience-in-use of today's digital infrastructure and can critically highlight issues of boundaries and privacy. We also offer pragmatic and methodological concepts that may be of value to the field of responsible software design and engineering.

"We picked community over privacy": Privacy and Security Concerns Emerging from Remote Learning Sociotechnical Infrastructure During COVID-19

With the rapid shift to remote learning in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, teachers, and students had to quickly adapt to what scholars have called "emergency remote learning" (ERL). This transition required increased reliance on digital tools, exacerbating privacy and security threats associated with expanded data collection and new vulnerabilities. In this study, we adopt a sociotechnical and infrastructural perspective to understand how these threats emerged through breakdowns and tensions in elementary school ERL. Through interviews with 29 US-based teachers and parents of elementary school students (grades PreK-6), we identify two core findings related to privacy and security. First, we detail three breakdowns in the ERL sociotechnical infrastructure: (1) reduced attention to privacy and security issues as parents and teachers cobbled together a patchwork of tools needed to make ERL work; (2) privacy and security risks that emerged from ambiguous and shifting school policies; and (3) the failure to adapt standard authentication mechanisms (e.g., passwords) to be usable by young children. Second, we identify tensions between parents' and teachers' desire to help children advance in their education and their desire for children's privacy and security in ERL, as well as tensions resulting from the collapse of home and school contexts. These findings collectively suggest that ERL exacerbated existing--and created new--privacy and security challenges for young students, and we argue these challenges will carry beyond the pandemic due to the increasing use of technology to supplement traditional education. In light of these findings, we recommend researchers and educators use a framework of care to develop social and technical approaches to improving remote learning in order to protect children's privacy and security.

Towards Trusted Data Sharing and Exchange in Agro-Food Supply Chains: Design Principles for Agricultural Data Spaces

In the modern agricultural landscape, realizing data’s full potential requires a unified infrastructure where stakeholders collaborate and share their data to gain insights and create business value. The agricultural data ecosystem (ADE) serves as a crucial socio-technical infrastructure, aggregating diverse data from various platforms and, thus, advertising sustainable agriculture and digitalization. Establishing trustworthy data sharing and exchange in agro-food value chains involves socioeconomic and technological elements addressed by the agricultural data space (ADS) and its trust principles. This paper outlines key challenges to data sharing in agro-food chains impeding ADE establishment based on the review of 27 studies in scientific literature. Challenges mainly arise from stakeholders’ mistrust in the data-sharing process, inadequate data access and use policies, and unclear data ownership agreements. In the ADE context, interoperability is a particularly challenging topic for ensuring the long-term sustainability of the system. Considering these challenges and data space principles and building blocks, we propose a set of design principles for ADS design and implementation that aim to mitigate the adverse impact of these challenges and facilitate agricultural data sharing and exchange.

Fortify the Truth: How to Defend Human Rights in an Age of Deepfakes and Generative AI

Abstract Audiovisual digital media and tools are critical elements in contemporary human rights documentation and advocacy. Generative AI, deepfakes and synthetic media compound questions of what to trust in an existing situation of government suppression, difficulty proving witness accounts and broader societal challenges to trust. There is a need to ‘fortify the truth’ by fostering resilient witnessing practices that can ensure trustworthy videos and strengthen narratives of vulnerable communities. The author identifies and speculates on actions at tactical, strategic, tools, technology, and policy levels, drawing upon human rights organization WITNESS’s work on proactive preparation for emerging technologies and technical infrastructures. Practical steps occur across a trajectory of using images and video in human rights advocacy and activism including filming, storytelling, watching, analysing, sharing, advocacy, and preservation. Guidance on filming must evolve to address deepfakes and opportunities and challenges in ‘authenticity infrastructure’. Narrative video advocacy and formal legal and policy processes must adapt to new technologies including text-to-image and text-to-video, new disinformation threats such as ‘floods of falsehood’ and new presentation opportunities. The evolution of watching, scrutinizing, and sharing videos accountability amid increasing volume and normalized image manipulation includes positive dimensions of the ‘media forensic turn’, including collaborative ‘open-source intelligence’ verification, and negative aspects involving excessive scrutiny. Finally, preserving audiovisual media is critical, and emerging socio-technical infrastructure should be shaped for community control. Underlying principles for ‘fortifying the truth’ include taking a proactive approach, centring voices and needs of people facing human rights abuses, and working with and challenging technologists and technology companies.

Экосистема инновационных сред территории: дополнительное образование и предпринимательство

In the article, based on part of the conclusions of a qualitative study of the acceleration infrastructure of universities and the concept of social ecosystems, the hypothesis of the concept of innovative environments in the region is formulated. Starting from the organizational weakness of small and medium-sized businesses, the secondary nature of the acceleration infrastructure of universities, and its incorrect orientation to "entrepreneurship" with mandatory access to startups, the structural insufficiency of the innovation environment of the region is stated. The solution to this problem is supposed to be within the framework of the formation of the socio-technical infrastructure of the ecosystem of innovative environments that ensure the continuity of training, education, research and project activities, and the employment of students. Based on the idea of the role of organizational infrastructure in the functioning of socio-cultural communities or environments, as well as on the changes resulting from the "digital" nature of this infrastructure, the main features of the regional innovation ecosystem are conceptualized. It is an organizational and meaningful association of existing subjects of innovative activity, the core of which is the education system (school – college – university), around which a platform of "additional education" is formed with the participation of business and scientific institutions as the main "consumers" of graduates. The cell of the environment is a small working group of students under the mentorship of a teacher, which undergoes a variable design and research trajectory under the supervision of "consumers". The event part of the environment necessarily includes not only project and educational work directly but also a cultural and leisure component. The problem of using the results of research and development is supposed to be solved by either bringing groups into the space of existing business ecosystems (technoparks, etc.) or by using the institute of venture studios acting as operators of such sites. Such an ecosystem should be a universal educational space organized by a "package of services" and included in the "package of social services" of the territory, the variability of which is provided by the function of participating "consumers", as well as a combination of educational, research, cultural, and leisure programs. The testing of the provisions laid down was carried out in the spring and summer of 2023 during the competitive program of the Innovation Promotion Fund.

Climate change-related mass migration requires health system resilience

Mass migration driven by climate change-related shocks and stresses is already occurring. We argue for a need for resilient health systems to ensure migration is adaptive, not detrimental, to health. We make this argument for two reasons. First, without resilience, large and sudden population increases such as from migration may strain health systems. Second, while health system resilience-building efforts are occurring, these tend to focus on crises that are substantially different from climate change-related mass migration—most notably because migrants are not threats but instead people with resources and capacity as well as needs. Then, articulating a health system as a large and complex sociotechnical infrastructure, we outline three salient features of health systems resilient to climate change-related mass migration: rapid ability to shift and adapt, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and transformation. We conclude by suggesting the resources, which policymakers need for achieving health system resilience from this sociotechnical perspective.

Clinical algorithms, racism, and “fairness” in healthcare: A case of bounded justice

To date, attempts to address racially discriminatory clinical algorithms have largely focused on fairness and the development of models that “do no harm.” While the push for fairness is rooted in a desire to avoid or ameliorate health disparities, it generally neglects the role of racism in shaping health outcomes and does little to repair harm to patients. These limitations necessitate reconceptualizing how clinical algorithms should be designed and employed in pursuit of racial justice and health equity. A useful lens for this work is bounded justice, a concept and research analytic proposed by Melissa Creary to guide multidisciplinary health equity interventions. We describe how bounded justice offers a lens for (1) articulating the deep injustices embedded in the datasets, methodologies, and sociotechnical infrastructure underlying design and implementation of clinical algorithms and (2) envisioning how these algorithms can be redesigned to contribute to larger efforts that not only address current inequities, but to redress the historical mistreatment of communities of color by biomedical institutions. Thus, the aim of this article is two-fold. First, we apply the bounded justice analytic to fairness and clinical algorithms by describing structural constraints on health equity efforts such as medical device regulatory frameworks, race-based medicine, and racism in data. We then reimagine how clinical algorithms could function as a reparative technology to support justice and empower patients in the healthcare system.

Affects and assemblages of (un)safety among female bus commuters in Dhaka

By examining the lived experiences of 30 female bus commuters in Dhaka using in-depth qualitative approaches, this paper argues for an enhanced understanding of socio-cognitive undercurrents of gendered mobilities. By privileging a feminist-affective lens, and tracing the emotionally and politically charged everyday negotiations of space, power struggles, (dis) comfort, and encounters between gendered bodies, the paper contends that women’s agency to act and respond to harassment in public transport is contingent on multi-scalar assemblages comprising socio-technical infrastructures, lifestyles, cultural histories, personal dispositions and situated knowledge. Moreover, by applying assemblage thinking and affect theories in transport spaces, the study links discussions on gender, violence and mobility beyond the common economic tropes as is common in transport studies of the Global South.

Socio-technical infrastructure interdependencies and their implications for urban sustainability; recent insights from the Netherlands

Cities are increasingly recognized as potential motors of sustainability transitions. These transitions build on existing as well as new infrastructures, and these infrastructures mutually influence each other in many ways, a phenomenon known as infrastructure interdependencies. These infrastructure interdependencies have significant implications for both enabling or restricting urban sustainability transitions but their implications remain understudied. We elaborate the role of interdependent infrastructure systems from a socio-technical perspective and explore recent examples of how socio-technical interdependencies in infrastructure systems influence urban sustainability efforts. We analyze infrastructure interdependencies in the Netherlands which is relevant because of its high urbanization rate, dense urban areas, and innovative developments. We distinguish seven socio-technical infrastructure interdependency types that can influence urban sustainability transitions: functional, evolutionary, spatial, life-cycle, policy/procedural, market, and culture/norm interdependencies. We identify and discuss contrasting multi-mode relationships of each interdependency example. Our results offer an interdisciplinary framework and examples of potential influential infrastructure interdependencies to explore, understand, and discuss the implications of infrastructure interdependencies for urban sustainability transitions.

Charcoal politics in Africa: Value chains, resource complexes, and energopolitics

Charcoal is a primary urban energy source throughout Africa; it is also blamed for massive environmental harm, in particular deforestation and forest degradation. Despite its centrality to urbanization, rural economies, and contemporary environmental transformations, however, charcoal's politics have been relatively underexplored. This article develops three approaches to the study of charcoal politics in Africa by critically assessing the existing literature on charcoal and drawing on studies of the politics of other forms of energy. First, charcoal can be understood as a commodity within value chains, generative of profits and rents. Formal and informal institutions govern charcoal's distribution, and the relative power of actors determines access, control, and proceeds. Second, charcoal is a material object manufactured from trees and distributed through socio-technical infrastructures. It is embedded within “resource complexes” involving political contestation around land, trees, labor, transport, and legitimacy, determining where, how, and by whom charcoal is produced and traded. Third, charcoal is a source of energy within specific energy regimes that underlie political-ecological systems, a form of “energopolitics.” Uganda provides a case study illustrating the energopolitics of charcoal as it shapes the state, state–society relations, and visions of development and modernization.

Understanding Digital Inequality: A Theoretical Kaleidoscope

The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth, and the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest, making digital inequality in educational settings impossible to overlook. Given this reality, we, all educators, came together to find ways to understand and address some of these inequalities. As a product of this collaboration, we propose a methodological toolkit: a theoretical kaleidoscope to examine and critique the constitutive elements and dimensions of digital inequalities. We argue that such a tool is helpful when a critical attitude to examine ‘the ideology of digitalism’, its concomitant inequalities, and the huge losses it entails for human flourishing seems urgent. In the paper, we describe different theoretical approaches that can be used for the kaleidoscope. We give relevant examples of each theory. We argue that the postdigital does not mean that the digital is over, rather that it has mutated into new power structures that are less evident but no less insidious as they continue to govern socio-technical infrastructures, geopolitics, and markets. In this sense, it is vital to find tools that allow us to shed light on such invisible and pervasive power structures and the consequences in the daily lives of so many.

Digital Domination and the Promise of Radical Republicanism

In this paper, I approach the power of digital platforms by using the republican concept of domination. More specifically, I argue that the traditional, agent-relative interpretation of domination, in the case of digital domination, is best supplemented by a more radical version, on which republicans ought to give priority to structural elements. I show how radical republicanism draws attention to (1) the economic rationales and the socio-technical infrastructures that underlie and support digital platforms and to (2) the forms of influence that are directed at cognitive dimensions, such as habituation and routinisation, which are particularly relevant for the power of digital platforms. These insights also imply that republicans have reason to favour a more structural response to digital platforms over more direct and individualised forms of control that fit with a ‘standard’ republican approach, such as securing exit options and requiring user consent.

Storage city: Water tanks, jerry cans, and batteries as infrastructure in Nairobi

Against the ‘normative concept of the networked city’, urban studies and infrastructure research have seen a shift towards investigations beyond the network that engage with the post-networked city, heterogeneous infrastructures, and other situations ‘on, off, below and beyond’ the grid, especially in southern cities. Expanding on debates around southern urbanisms and their socio-technical infrastructures, we explore a ubiquitous yet rarely discussed element of contemporary urban infrastructures: storage. In Nairobi, a city shaped by infrastructural heterogeneity and uncertainty, households of all backgrounds and sizes store water and electricity within various constellations of actors, practices and artefacts. We show how domestic storage, its artefacts and practices cumulate in a storage city that is not opposed to a networked or post-networked city but rather entangled with it. We present domestic storage as crucial infrastructure to the socio-technical functioning of Nairobi, discuss diverse storage artefacts and practices, and highlight how a focus on storage can contribute to re-imaginings of infrastructural articulations beyond networks and flows.